BEHIND THE COUNTER IN LONDON.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2614, 23 August 1882, Page 3

BEHIND THE COUNTER IN LONDON.

[From the "European Mail."] It is nothing short of shameful that, with all our boasted social advancement and our plans awd projeots for the intellectual and physioal Improvement of the working classes, a large number—thousands probably—of young girls of respectable parentage and training should be doomed to a life of drudgery and long hours that, were similar terms proposed to able-bodied dock labourers or bricklayers' hod carriers, thoy would be indignantly and soornfully rejected. Fiftyfive hours, to a British working man's way of thinking, oonstitufo a fair week's work. But the fragile, poor little lasses who toil in fashion's or finery's behalf are less fortunate. A correspondent who has interviewed several of these young ladies, as they came to a local dispensary for medioine, writes: Of those whom I interviewed, themajority were kept hard atit, excepting about an hour altogether for breakfast, dinner, arid tea, from half-past seven in the morning until ton o'clock at night, with a difference on Faturday. The bricklayer's laborer leaves off work at one o'olock in the afternoon ; the young lady of the shop counter has at that time yet eleven hours to serve. Indeed she would think herself lucky if it is no later than twelve o'olock, when the business premises being closed ana the disordered goods properly roplaoed on the shelves and in the drawers, she is at liberty at last to sit down and rest her aohing limbs "You must be glad enough when Sunday comes round," I remarked to one of the patients, a tall, delioate looking young woman, whose feet were so swollen that, though she wore cloth boots many sizss too large for her, they gaped fully an inch at the lacing. " Well, in one sense of course I am glad, sir," she replied, " because if it wob not for that break in the work I could not possibly continue at it. But it is a day of pais. rather than a day of rest for me. O •reek days my feet seem to get after I have been standing a few hours, and. though they swell very much and feel b? heavy as lead, they do not cause me any panto speak of. But on a Sunday, when I am not compelled to walk about, and put them

up to rest in one chair while I lit on another, the swelling doesn't come into them, but instead they throb and born so I could cry with the pain of them." "Then yon are not able to get ont on your only day of leisure and enjoy a few hoars in the fresh air?" "Iwitnl could do it, sir. I liberty, o£ coursa, to r?o so as far employers are concerned, as the lime is my own' from Saturday night until Monday morning ; but I should be afraid if I walked any distance I should not be able to get my shoes on at all next morning. Beside*, it is not only one's feet swelling through being on them so many hours that makes one prefer to stay in on Sundays; it is being so bodily tired as well. It is a treat, if the pain in my ankles wUI let me, to lie abed till eleren or twelve o'clock on the Sunday morning, and tolie down again on the oonch after dinner. It isn't every assistant who has the opportunity. There are some in the cmaller houses of business who srn not able to suit themselves, in that way. Their employers ha?e no conIvenience for them to remain i: doors on Sunday, and it is understood when they are engaged that they will go to their friends during the day and return in the evening. But I know some who have no parents or friends in London, and who go to church or walk about to pass away the time, with a rest in the middle of the day, when they get their dinner at a oookshop or a cc&ee-hcuse, and they, of course, must find it much harder than a girl who is in a comfortable house of business." "lam afraid that I shall have to give it up," said another young woman, who was aMicted with aoute pains in her knee joints; "I grow so sick and faint towa:ds night. We dare not sit down ; indeed, there is nothing to sit on. We had a very heavy day yesterday. I was in the shop shortly after seven, and it was holfpiat twelve before I sat down to supper—seventeen hours—and I felt so tired in the evening that, having to fetch something from the back shop, I sat down for a minute on the shop steps that were there. But our forewoman saw me and took me to task for it. I told her .the reason, and she said she had quite enough to think of in the business without being troubled with complaints of that kind, and that if I did not feel strong enough for the work I had best say so, and give notice to leave. And I don't want to do* that," said the poor girl, despondently ; " I couldn't earn so much at anything else, and my parents living a long way down in the country, I should be obliged to work at some* thing to keep myself. I've got two sisters who were in the same line as I am j but they got so bad with the long hours and the standing that the doctor told them they would be cripples for life if they remained at the business ; and so they left it, and paid the little money they had saved to learn the mantle work. But the pay is so bad that, though they are both in full work aad live together, they oan scarcely get clothes to wear after they've paid the rent of their room, and bought their food. So I must buckle to, I suppose," she added, with a feeble attempt at a smile," " and try and put up with it a little longer, at all events." Another lady-like, well spoken, and intelligent young person informed me that she was in her twentieth year, but from her general appearance she would have passed as being at least 6sven-and-twenty. Her malady was a swelling of the larger veins, and she had been so aftioted more than a year and & half. She had been apprenticed when she was fifteen, and served three years, and since that time she had worked at the same establishment. " I get very good wages now—--518 a year—but it is terribly hard work. It would be easier if there were any young men employed there, but there is only one, and he is a porter, and seldom in the shop. Where there are young men you oan generally gat one o! them to lift down for you heavy goods that are on the higher shelves. If a girl is not very strong, she finds it a great strain on her . back and shoulders to lift the heavy rolls and parcels from above her head, to say nothing of how it helps to tire her when she has to be on her feet at least thirteen or fourteen hours every dsy, end sixteen or seventeen on a Saturday. We open our place about seven on Saturday morning, and it being a marketing street, we never get rid of our latest customers until twelve, bo that it is quite one when the place is putjfS/it .. straight, and we are at liberty to go fcs bed. How many hours weekly am 1 in the habit of working, at a fair average t No more nor less than what I have told you—from halfpast seven till ten all days, except and then till twelve at night. I never worked fewer hours all the five years I have been at the businers. I used to think that as I grew older and stronger I sbonldn't feel the hardship of the long hours so much. But I find it harder to bear thanJever, I thick ; especially in the winter time, when the gas it alight from four o'clock until shutting up time. The smell and the heat of it makes one's head aohe, and if a girl's place at the counter is near the door, every time it is snung open there comes in a gush of cold wind likely to give her face aohe or sore throat. I think the winter months are worse than the Bummer for us, though perhaps there isn't much to choose between them when one comes to think of it. In the spring time and the summer a girl naturally gets low spirited, being confined in the dull shop day after day, from early in the morning until late at night, with a blind hung before the window to keep out the cheerful sunshine when it's on that side of the war.

It is terribly close in the shop in the hoWsl weather when the gis is alight in the evening, and it is at these times one's feet ache mora perhaps than any other—ache, I mean, with standing, but in the winter time, when it is bitter oold acd frosty, they aohe with ohilblains as well. At our place, no matter how oold the weather is, we never have an opportunity of going near a fire except at meal times, and most girls have chilblains either on their feet or on their hands in consequence. It is dreadfully cold handling calico and glaz:d things in the winter, but at our place we are not allowed to wear wool mittens. It doesn't look like business, our master says. Bat, speaking for myself, I could put up with the heat and with the cold—with anything—if they would but allow mete sit down a little while now and then during the day. I don't say during the busy time, because the chairs and stools at our side of the counter would, of course, be in the way ; but just for an hour or ro between dinner time and tea time, when business is slack." Another poor girl, of robust habit and sturdily built, came in ehufflisg along and flinching at every step like _ a person with gout. She was suffering from corns on the eoles of her feet, and the doctor informed me that this was a common result of stanoing and walking many hours a day in thin shoes on a boarded floor. The poor patient in question—she was about eighteen yeara old—could not refrain from crying. She had tried every remedy that had been suggested to her, including canstio and extraction, but as fast as her corns were destroyed they cams again. She had lined her boots with wadding, she said, and with layers of oiled flannel; but come the evening, when her feat grew tired, the corns began to burn and throb ; and, to use her own words, it was like walking on hot splinters of glass, and the only way the could get rid of the pain, so as to be able to sleep when she went to D6d, was to immerse her feet in warm water for half an hour or so. I hardly know whether she was most to be pitied or the young woman who was with her, and who was employed at the same drapery establishment. It itead of corns she had blisters on tho soles of her feet, and which of late had so incapacitated her from getting about briskly that she had threetened with discharge from fcer present situation. It is only jr.st to say that of all those I talked with this was tho only shop girl who complained of harsh treatment on the part of the employer. female employee, as rule, sastn to b-j liberally paid, fairly fed, and comfortably lodged, and hare nothing to find fault with esesp'itg the many hours a dav they are kept at work, and the cruelty inflicted on them by denying them the privilege o£ sitting down in their brief spoils of leisure from counter duty. But the poos girl with bli-tjred feet seemed to ha\ a fallen into the hands of exceptionally hard taskmasters. ."We can't have you here, you know, limping about the place like a cat on hot bricks," wa3 the unfeeling remark, as she informed us, the shopwalker had addressed to her on the previous day, " and we expect our br.-da to appear lively and pleasant, not to look cross and sulky at every customer !hoy have to aerve after tight o'clock or so, as though they rercnted their coming at all at thfcS hour. Customers don't like it. and I dcn|t like it, and I won't stand it." "But it ; s not that, I am cross and sulky," said (he pocr creature, "it is because my fe»i nohow, and lam so tired." These are a fesv unvarnished fucta in connection with the genteel slavery to which too many ycurg lady r.sirsttiits condemned behand the counters oi large and email drapery houses London.